What's on Your Mind?

Laying people off takes its toll. “Going back 25 years plus ago, I can still remember every situation that I had to do it in,” says Robert Kovach, a work psychologist and former corporate executive. The experience sticks with you, he says. Because it’s not just about “operational stress: Have I filled out the forms? Made the calls?” It’s also filled with “moral stress,” he adds. “Even when the decision is necessary, it can feel like a violation of your own personal values.” People laying off their coworkers often feel a clash between their responsibility to their company and their responsibility to be a good person to the people they’re laying off—parti…

Another round of Epstein files—approximately three million documents—was released January 30, and this batch included a lot of prominent names. That list included philanthropist and business magnate Bill Gates, entrepreneur Elon Musk, and author, doctor and longevity influencer Peter Attia. They were all allegedly connected to Epstein in different ways, and as a result, their mentions in the documents are varied. But it’s their responses that offer lessons to others in the business world about how to respond when faced with a crisis. Dealing with one of this magnitude is no easy feat, and it requires absolute trust between a client and a crisis manager, Beverly Hills …

Over the years, I’ve written and spoken extensively about my belief that design has the power to change the world. I find daily inspiration in the many individuals and organizations leaning away from design as pure aesthetics and embracing design as a powerful tool for promoting the wellbeing of both people and the planet. I refer to wellbeing as holistic health. It includes holistic health of the people: end users—those using the products, and makers—suppliers, producers, and manufacturers. Also, of the planet, because no design is isolated; it is always dependent on and embedded in systems. Our choices have far-reaching impact. Upstream decisions about a design’s ma…

Cellphones are everywhere—including, until recently, in schools. Since 2023, 29 states, including New York, Vermont, Florida, and Texas, have passed laws that require K-12 public schools to enforce bans or strict limits on students using their cellphones on campus. Another 10 states have passed other measures that require local school districts to take some kind of action on cellphone usage. Approximately 77% of public schools now forbid students from having their phones out during class—an increase from the 66% of schools that forbade students from using phones at school in 2015. Schools across the country are finding different ways to enforce no-phone po…

As a consultancy owner, I’ve been experimenting heavily with the headline AI applications for the better part of two years now. Our teams have tested it across dozens of products and use cases. Some experiments worked immediately. Others failed at first but succeeded six months later when the models improved. Some we’re still figuring out. The results keep evolving. A lot of leaders are obsessing over AI strategies right now. Detailed roadmaps, implementation plans, and resource allocation. I get it. Leadership wants clarity, stakeholders want commitments, and everyone wants to know the plan. But here’s the issue. Technology is moving way faster than tradition…

If I had a dollar for every time a Forbes 30 Under 30 alum has been charged with fraud, I’d have $5. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it has happened five times. By now, the Forbes “curse” has been well documented, from Charlie Javice’s JPMorgan fiasco (who was on the Under 30 list in 2019) to crypto poster boy Sam Bankman-Fried perpetrating one of the biggest financial frauds in history (he appeared on the list in 2021). This week, another honoree has been hit with federal charges. Gökçe Güven, the 26-year-old founder and CEO of fintech startup Kalder, faces 52 years in prison after being charged with fraud, accused of cheating investors out of millions. …

Nikolai Tesla was a revolutionary thinker with bold, transformative ideas. Yet it was George Westinghouse and Thomas Edison who shaped how electricity was brought to the world. The personal computer was invented at Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center), but it was Apple that brought the Macintosh to market. William Coley pioneered cancer immunotherapy, but James Allison made it a reality. We grow up believing that if an idea is good, it will naturally rise to the top. Yet that’s rarely, if ever, true. To make an impact, you need to understand power and influence. It isn’t about titles, authority, or formal position. It’s about understanding how decisions actually get…

Ah, brainstorming. The corporate rite of passage where creativity goes to die. It usually involves a room full of well-intentioned people offering ideas that feel familiar but not fresh. Why does this happen? Because most people stick to the “safe zone,” avoiding anything that might make waves, or worse, ruffle feathers. But here’s the problem: safe ideas don’t change the game. If you want ideas that truly shake things up, you’ve got to do something radical. You have to give your team permission not just to think differently but to think outrageously. And to do that, you need to encourage them to come up with ideas so bold, they might just get them fired. How to …

At its core, public health is about driving healthy behavior changes by building awareness, meeting people where they are, and offering solutions that are accessible and grounded in evidence. Throughout my career, I have worked on issues ranging from foster adoption and drunk driving prevention to tobacco prevention and cessation, always with science as our foundation. But the media landscape, and how people engage with information, has changed dramatically. To remain relevant and effective, public health must evolve. That means rethinking not just what we communicate, but how we motivate, engage, and sustain healthy behaviors. WHY IT’S IMPORTANT TO LEAN IN Gamific…

Three AI companies—OpenAI, Google, and Perplexity—are on the verge of receiving approval to sell their technology, hosted on their own cloud systems, directly to the government, a person familiar with the matter tells Fast Company. That authorization will be on a “low impact” and pilot level, the person said, but constitutes a major step toward independence. That independence could help those companies avoid some of the complications created by ongoing partnerships between AI firms and longtime government tech contractors. As large language models have gone mainstream, AI companies have often relied on tech firms that have already passed arduous government security re…

Ghost jobs are postings for positions that don’t actually exist for various reasons, and they waste countless hours for job seekers who apply to roles that were never meant to be filled. Experts in recruiting and career strategy have identified specific warning signs that reveal when a posting is likely fake or abandoned. This guide breaks down how to recognize these red flags before investing time in an application, so you can better focus your efforts on genuine opportunities. Prioritize Responsive Employers that Show Immediate Engagement One reliable way to identify a ghost job is to see whether applying to it leads to any human response at all. Today, silence h…

Time capsules are designed to be resilient by nature. But no time capsule has survived as long as designers hope “America’s Time Capsule” will. The time capsule, designed for the semiquincentennial of the U.S. founding, is being created by America250, the nonpartisan, congressionally mandated group organizing commemorations for this year. The plan is to bury the time capsule underground in Philadelphia at Independence National Historical Park on July 4, and for it to be opened in another 250 years, in 2276. The problem is time capsules, which are typically buried underground, and exposed to the elements, don’t really last that long. “We’ve unburied some time …

Hopefully you never find yourself left behind by a partner while hiking a mountain or abandoned in the woods. If you do, you might be a victim of an “alpine divorce.” The phrase has gained traction on social media in recent weeks following news of a climber’s guilty verdict after he left his girlfriend behind on a hike, where she froze to death on Austria’s highest mountain. The phrase is said to have originated from the 1893 short story An Alpine Divorce by Robert Barr, in which an unhappy husband plots to kill his wife by pushing her off a mountain during a trip to the Swiss Alps. Across platforms like TikTok and X, women have started sharing their own stori…

The town halls didn’t work. The twelve month wellness program didn’t work. The pricey motivational speaker definitely didn’t work. Your team looks busy, but is still very, very stuck. What looks like apathy is almost never laziness. What looks like resistance is rarely defiance. What you’re actually seeing is a nervous system in threat mode because change fatigue is fear fatigue. The fact is, the human brain just isn’t wired to fully distinguish between a physical threat and an organizational one. According to Gallup’s 2025 State of the Global Workplace report, half of employees in the U.S. and Canada reported significant daily stress, which is higher than all other g…

Finally, some good news for renters: Housing rental market concessions are at their highest level in over a decade, as lower demand and higher supply drive landlords to compete for prospective tenants by offering all sorts of incentives and freebies. Let’s take a look at the numbers. In January, 16.6% of stabilized apartments in the U.S. were offering some type of concession, one point higher than the previous month, and the highest since over a decade ago in 2014, according to RealPage Market Analytics as reported by CNBC. What is a rent concession? Rent concessions are generally one-time incentives, freebies, or perks, such as free rent for a few months, free…

Earlier this month, photos depicting Zendaya and Tom Holland’s wedding just about broke the internet. Images of the celebrity power couple standing at the altar, popping champagne, and posing with a Spider-Man mask quickly racked up more than 10 million likes on Instagram. The only catch? They weren’t real. The collection of AI-generated images, first shared in a since-deleted Instagram post from AI creator Juan Regueira Rodríguez, went so viral that they reached Zendaya herself, as the Emmy-winning actress revealed in a new interview. On the latest episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live, Zendaya discussed her upcoming film The Drama, which centers on her character’s…